This is going to sound extremely weird... but I don't understand cosplay because I spent so long in competition costuming.
Cosplay is a term I've only even heard in the last six or seven years, and I still haven't figured out how it is different than what I'd call hall costuming or possibly LARPing without an official game in progress.
When I moved to DC in the mid 80s, I joined what was then a vital (opinionated, cliquish) and thriving competition costuming community. Even if you weren't competing officially (the in-crowd was ALWAYS measuring itself against itself against what that person had done previously) you wore costumes for two reasons:
1) Love of character. Sometimes a character you created. Sometimes regardless of whether you "ought" to be a media character. (There were plenty of discussions of whether you should be playing to your own race/gender/background/size. Suffice it to say that I didn't let being a shortish, fat, white woman stop me from starting work on a Lord Bowler costume)
2) Love of challenge/learning experience. Can fabric be found that matches a faded print from 1910? There isn't any commercial beaded trim like that, but if you loom this bit and add that bit... What happens when you put two colors of dye in separate spray bottles and let loose on a piece of wet silk with both hands? What would a fat white female Lord Bowler wear and still be recognizably Bowler?
I'm making myself a bit nostalgic! I enjoyed the learning and experimenting part.
But anyway - this is a wordy way of saying that I hear the words "play" and "criticism" and they are so far from my experience of making and wearing costume that every time the topic of cosplay comes up I'm sitting uncomprehendingly with my head on one side like a dog in front of a victrola. This post is pointing the way to a whole new perspective.
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Cosplay is a term I've only even heard in the last six or seven years, and I still haven't figured out how it is different than what I'd call hall costuming or possibly LARPing without an official game in progress.
When I moved to DC in the mid 80s, I joined what was then a vital (opinionated, cliquish) and thriving competition costuming community. Even if you weren't competing officially (the in-crowd was ALWAYS measuring itself against itself against what that person had done previously) you wore costumes for two reasons:
1) Love of character. Sometimes a character you created. Sometimes regardless of whether you "ought" to be a media character. (There were plenty of discussions of whether you should be playing to your own race/gender/background/size. Suffice it to say that I didn't let being a shortish, fat, white woman stop me from starting work on a Lord Bowler costume)
2) Love of challenge/learning experience. Can fabric be found that matches a faded print from 1910? There isn't any commercial beaded trim like that, but if you loom this bit and add that bit... What happens when you put two colors of dye in separate spray bottles and let loose on a piece of wet silk with both hands? What would a fat white female Lord Bowler wear and still be recognizably Bowler?
I'm making myself a bit nostalgic! I enjoyed the learning and experimenting part.
But anyway - this is a wordy way of saying that I hear the words "play" and "criticism" and they are so far from my experience of making and wearing costume that every time the topic of cosplay comes up I'm sitting uncomprehendingly with my head on one side like a dog in front of a victrola. This post is pointing the way to a whole new perspective.